Jenny McCarthy is a former Playboy bunny, not an academic expert, a doctor or a vaccine researcher. Yet 24% of parents surveyed recently by the University of Michigan say they place “some trust” in information provided by …
vaccines
Bruesewitz v. Wyeth: What the Supreme Court Decision Means for Vaccines
Vaccine injury is a tricky thing to prove — medically and legally. So it was inevitably controversial when the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday against the parents of Hannah Bruesewitz, 18, who suffered seizures and permanent …
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Autism, Vaccines and Fraud: Q&A With Author Seth Mnookin
A UK report published last week offered details about how Dr. Andrew Wakefield falsified his 1998 report linking autism to certain childhood vaccines.
Study Linking Vaccines to Autism Is “Fraudulent”
It’s unfortunate but true that sometimes the hard facts of science don’t turn out to be so grounded in reality after all. Scientific fraud is certainly not new, but manipulation of medical data is always troubling, and …
Post-H1N1, Why You Still Need to Worry About Flu
The H1N1 pandemic has come and gone, but that doesn’t mean we’ve seen the last of the flu strain that started it all.
Getting your flu shot — with a patch?
Expanding on previous research into the possible use of tiny “micro-needles” to deliver vaccines using a patch, researchers at Emory University and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed dissolving “micro-needles” made from freeze-dried vaccine that could not only minimize pain associated with vaccinations, but improve immune
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CDC confirms effectiveness of HPV vaccine in men
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed its provisional recommendation from 2009 that the HPV vaccine (Gardasil) against human papillomavirus infection is both safe and effective in males in preventing genital warts.
The HPV vaccine was approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2006 for use in …
Doctor behind vaccine-autism link loses license
It took nearly six months but the General Medical Council (GMC) in the U.K. has pulled Dr. Andrew Wakefield’s license to practice medicine in the United Kingdom.
Wakefield is the researcher who nearly single-handedly fueled parental concerns about the link between vaccines and autism. In 1998, he published a paper in the medical …
No benefit to delaying childhood vaccinations
In all the time I’ve covered health and medicine issues, nothing has been more polarizing than the debate over childhood immunizations. And while scientific evidence continues to mount against a causal connection between vaccines and developmental disorders such as autism, there was one concern voiced by some parents that seemed to …
In spite of eradication efforts, a polio outbreak in Tajikistan
Despite the recent $700 million donation from Bill Gates to help eradicate polio around the globe, as of last summer the disease was spreading across Africa, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). And last week the WHO confirmed at least 120 cases of polio in Tajikistan, the small country of about 7.3 million people that
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Many parents remain wary of vaccines
Despite the lack of scientific evidence linking the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism, roughly one in four parents still believe that vaccines may put some healthy children at risk for developing an autism …
A breakthrough in vaccine preservation
Vaccines have dramatically impacted global health: by 1979, international vaccination campaigns had successfully led to the eradication of smallpox, which was once estimated to kill as many as 30% of people infected. And since the launch of the World Health Organization’s polio eradication campaign in 1988, widespread vaccination has
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